Left alone, Miz Liz would cause no trouble. For a moment Alec looked at her as she stood so wearily beneath the bright light, her wet coat matted with straw and manure. She showed no further interest in him or her colt, not even when the boy spoke to her.

“Old mare, why do you make these moments, which should be the best of all, so terrible? I’m not going to let you kill him as you did another of your sons. Nor will you kill me as you did old Charley Grimm. I’m not afraid of you, old mare, just very sad for you.”

He turned to the sprawled bundle on the floor, all legs and head and eyes. A fine colt. Not black like his famous sire but chestnut with a blaze, the same as Miz Liz. A big-boned colt. Big nostrils, too. Good for scooping in the air on his way down the homestretch when he’d need it most.

Alec’s hands were slippery on the wet body. Large eyes, so inquisitive and unafraid, met his own. Finally he rose and went to the adjacent room, noting the equipment he’d need later on. Taking a soft, clean cloth he went back to the colt and began wiping him dry.

“Not the same as your mother’s tongue,” he said, “but it’ll do for the time being.”

For many minutes he watched the colt’s attempts to unlimber the long forelegs that would not do what he asked of them. It wouldn’t take long before this fellow would be the master of his gangling body.

“I hate to tell you this,” Alec said, picking up the colt once more, “but you don’t have a very smart mother. At first she doesn’t know you and won’t have you. In fact, she’d like to do away with you. But after a while, not so very long from now, she’ll come over to us very slowly and we won’t have to run away. She’ll put her old head down and sniff, and then she’ll start licking you, just as though none of this had happened at all.”

He opened the stall door, still talking to the colt. “My job will be done then and she’ll be as loving as she is mean now. But as I said she’s not very smart at the beginning. We have to keep reminding her that you’re hers and there’s no getting out of it.”

Miz Liz had moved to the corner of her stall. She stood quietly, showing no interest in them, her disheveled head hung low. Alec shifted the heavy, awkward bundle in his arms so he might watch her better. He did not move far from the door while letting the colt support some of his own weight.

“Old mare,” he called, “this is your son, and the sooner you get to know him the sooner I can clean you up and get this business over with. But I’ll not come a step closer. I know you too well.”

Without raising her head, Miz Liz suddenly plunged toward them, her nostrils flared and ears back. Alec pulled the colt outside and slammed the stall door in the mare’s face. She made no attempt to reach over it but turned and went back to the corner of her stall again.

Breathing heavily, Alec put down the colt. “Anyway, she’s getting to know you,” he said. “It shouldn’t take too much longer.”

Far down the corridor the door banged open and his father’s running figure emerged from the darkness.